The Singapore-based retailer already generates a large portion of its sales in the U.S. It’s trying to shift to an Amazon-style marketplace where sellers can list their own products alongside those Shein manufactured. Forever 21 products will be available to Shein’s 150 million online customers, according to a statement.

Closely held Shein has been considering going public, according to reports. Shein will also have the option to test in-person shopping experiences at Forever 21 locations in the U.S. The Asian retailer has built a business worth $66 billion almost entirely online.

Shein Group Ltd. ranks No. 2 in the Asia Database. That’s Digital Commerce 360’s rankings of the largest online retailers in Asia by web sales. Forever 21 is No. 121 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

Shein expands further through Forever 21

In the deal, Shein acquired about one-third of Sparc Group, which owns Forever 21 through a joint venture. The venture also includes Authentic Brands Group Inc. and Simon Property Group Inc. In return, Sparc Group became a minority shareholder in Shein. Specific financial figures weren’t disclosed.

“The powerful combination of Simon’s leadership in physical retail, Authentic’s brand development expertise, and Shein’s on-demand model will help us drive scalable growth and together make fashion more accessible to all,” Shein’s executive chairman Donald Tang said in a statement.

Shein sells some of its fashion products for less than $5, helping it quickly rise to prominence in the ultra-low-priced apparel market. Shein has also unseated brands like Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe that were popular in the early 2000s.

The retailer, which produces the majority of its products in China, has faced scrutiny in the U.S. as lawmakers question its opaque supply chain and use of forced labor. There are also ongoing concerns about its carbon emissions due to the sheer volume of low-cost clothing, often made from polyester, that it produces annually.

Forever 21, which had 800 stores at its peak and relied on a mall-based strategy, struggled as more shopping moved online. It was acquired out of bankruptcy in 2020 by a consortium of brands including Simon Property and Authentic. The partnership with Shein could be a way for it to expand its online reach and get its name in front of Gen Z shoppers, who are Shein’s most loyal customers.

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Overstock’s $21.5 million cash offer has been selected as the lead bidder for Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property, according to court papers filed June 13. That sets the price floor for the bankrupt retailer’s brand.

A bankruptcy judge must approve the bid. It doesn’t include the retailer’s desirable Buy Buy Baby brand or its Harmon unit, court papers show.

Overstock.com is No. 50 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Bed Bath & Beyond ranked No. 47 prior to its bankruptcy.

Bed Bath & Beyond brand rights could go to Overstock

The offer puts Overstock, one of the nation’s top Internet retailers, in a favorable position to acquire Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property out of bankruptcy. If Bed Bath & Beyond’s advisers select a competing offer, Overstock receives a break-up fee of up to $430,000 plus expenses.

Final bids for Bed Bath & Beyond’s assets are due June 16. An auction will be held June 21 if rival bids materialize in the next couple days. A New Jersey bankruptcy judge is scheduled to consider approving the sale at a June 27 hearing.

Lawyers representing Bed Bath & Beyond and its unsecured creditors declined to comment. Overstock didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.

Bed Bath & Beyond filed bankruptcy in April with plans to liquidate the retail chain listing more than $5.2 billion in total debt as of last year. A company lawyer said at the time Bed Bath & Beyond filed bankruptcy that they were still hopeful the retailer would be able to complete a going concern sale for the business.

The bankruptcy is Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc., 23-10574, US Bankruptcy Court for New Jersey (Newark).

A long time coming

Bed Bath & Beyond never quite caught on to ecommerce, says Rich DePencier, area managing partner and chief marketing officer of Chief Outsiders. Chief Outsiders is a management consulting services company.

The retailer didn’t experience the pandemic-induced burst of ecommerce growth other merchants did. Of the top five merchants in the houseware/home furnishings category, Bed Bath & Beyond was the only retailer to have less than 10% 3-year CAGR, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis.

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Bed Bath & Beyond has experienced years of dwindling sales. Most recently, the merchant lost 33% in digital sales in 2022 compared with a year earlier, according to Digital Commerce 360 data.

There is not much ground to be gained by competitors. By the end of its tenure, the ailing home goods merchant accounted for 1.4% of overall houseware/home furnishings in the U.S. market in 2022, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis of U.S. Department of Commerce data.

Digital sales for the housewares and home furnishings category decreased in 2022. Consumers spent less time and money on home improvement projects. Instead, consumers allocated funds to pre-pandemic activities like dining out and traveling. Including Bed Bath & Beyond, the U.S. Top 1000 Digital Commerce 360 retailers accounted for 29.9% of housewares/home furnishings category sales in 2022. That is down from 32.1% in 2021. Notably, without Bed Bath & Beyond, web sales for the category would have declined 4.1% in 2022.

Amazon continues to dominate home goods category

Mass merchants like Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1 in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 retailer rankings), Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. (No. 5) have also experienced a slowdown in ecommerce sales. Amazon still holds the majority of the home goods category market share with 88.47% in 2022. That is down compared with 86.13% in 2021, according to market research company YipitData.

Walmart (No. 2) also experienced a decline. Its market share accounted for 7.27% in 2022, compared with 8.58% in 2021. And Target Inc. also dropped in 2022 to 4.27%, compared with 5.29% in 2021.

A long time coming

Bed Bath & Beyond never quite caught on to ecommerce, says Rich DePencier, area managing partner and chief marketing officer of Chief Outsiders, a management consulting services company.

The retailer didn’t experience the pandemic-induced burst of ecommerce growth other merchants did. Of the top five merchants in the houseware/home furnishings category, Bed Bath & Beyond was the only retailer to have less than 10% 3-year CAGR, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis.

Where Bed Bath & Beyond shoppers will shop instead

When asked where Bed Bath & Beyond shoppers will shop instead:

• Amazon (68%)
• Target (58%)
• Walmart (48%)
• Home Goods (34%)
• At Home (12%)
• Macy’s (10%)
• Wayfair (5%)
• Crate & Barrel (3%)
• Williams-Sonoma (3%)
• Overstock (2%)
• Nordstrom (2%), according to Numerator, a consumer insights and analytics company survey of 500 verified Bed Bath & Beyond shoppers on April 24.

The opportunity lies in providing the shopping “experience” that Bed Bath & Beyond offered consumers, DePencier says.

“Retailers that are willing to invest in becoming more of a solution for consumers stand to benefit,” he says. That entails connecting the online and in-store experience of shopping for “big cultural moments.” These moments include weddings, babies, and college dorm room shopping.

Wayfair is opening stores in the U.S. to give consumers the option to see in-person what they might buy online. In 2022, IKEA invested $3 billion to turn stores across the U.S. and Europe into delivery hubs and support its ecommerce sales. In April 2023, IKEA invested $2.2 billion to expand storefronts and fulfillment networks throughout the U.S.

“Merchants like Wayfair are trying to create that in store experience. It’s just like how an IKEA has a warehouse right next to the store. You can pick the product on your way out,” says Gopi Polavarapu, senior vice president and general manager of Kore.ai, an artificial intelligence customer experience software vendor. “Especially when it comes to three or four day delivery commitments. It’s impossible to commit to those [timeframes] because they don’t have warehouses in every market.” That’s where locally positioned storefronts come in handy to provide last mile delivery, he says.

Bed Bath & Beyond was too slow to adopt new technology

Before the pandemic, Bed Bath & Beyond had a game plan in place to use technology like QR codes to help consumers shop in-store. Then the pandemic hit and the merchant didn’t adjust its ecommerce side of the business, Polavarapu says.

Polavarapu previously worked at software vendor Zebra Technologies, which sells electronic sensors and industrial scanners. The software and device vendor met with Bed Bath & Beyond in 2019 to introduce these devices to modernize in-store shopping experience, he says. “The plan included placing QR codes [on merchandise] to help shoppers” find what they needed in store, Polavarapu says.

“But when it came to digital ecommerce, they were much slower in adopting technology,” he says. “They tried to save as much [money] as they could rather than modernizing their entire operations.”

Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 23. It plans to liquidate inventory and go out of business.

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The expansion will be fueled in part by an investment of as much as $200 million in Bergdorf Goodman’s parent company, Neiman Marcus Group, by Farfetch Ltd., an online luxury retailer that also sells its ecommerce services to other retailers.

Nieman Marcus is No. 74 in the 2021 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000.

Farfetch and Neiman Marcus executives said Tuesday they will work together to improve Bergdorf Goodman’s U.S. website and launch its first international websites in 2023. In an interview, Neiman Marcus Group CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck said he couldn’t disclose which countries the company is targeting — but China is a top “consideration.” Providing websites in different countries will reduce shipping times and import expenses for shoppers to buy from Bergdorf Goodman.

“I think we will open in a lot of countries,” van Raemdonck said. “The question is really which countries do we double down on, from an investment point of view.”

Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus products will also be available on Farfetch’s website, which sells to customers in more than 190 countries. That’s a potential source of additional revenue for Neiman Marcus, which is looking to bounce back after filing for bankruptcy during the pandemic.

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Van Raemdonck said the company considered going international on its own, but it ultimately decided to partner with Farfetch because it offered speed and efficiency.

“We are doing really well right now,” van Raemdonck said. “We’re growing at an accelerated rate compared to pre-COVID and at a higher profitability rate.”

The deal with Farfetch will further speed up growth, he added.

Van Raemdonck and Farfetch CEO Jose Neves didn’t disclose how much Neiman Marcus Group is paying Farfetch for its ecommerce services or what kind of revenue they eventually expect to generate on the new Bergdorf Goodman websites or on Farfetch’s own website.

Farfetch shares initially rose on news of the partnership before falling 4.7% at 12:35 p.m. in New York, following a reversal in U.S. equity markets.

Both executives said they are bullish on the U.S. luxury market, buoyed in part by strong economic growth.

“It’s also growing fundamentally because there are more consumers, younger consumers who are entering the luxury market during the pandemic,” van Raemdonck said.

The average age of customers who spend more than $10,000 each year with Neiman Marcus Group has fallen by seven years compared with before the pandemic, he said. The men’s business is also robust.

“A partnership of this scale with one of the U.S.’s preeminent luxury retailers is a stamp of legitimacy on Farfetch’s technology,” Wells Fargo analyst Ike Boruchow wrote in a research note on Tuesday.

The post Bergdorf Goodman eyes online expansion abroad with Farfetch deal appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

“That’s it,” my wife declared as she slammed the newspaper down on the kitchen counter. “I’m not shopping at Old Orchard anymore!”

She was responding to the news that the village of Skokie, home to the Old Orchard shopping mall, had agreed to raise the sales tax at the mall 1% — to 11.25% for retail purchases and an appetite-suppressing 13.25% for restaurant bills.

The money the higher tax raises will go directly to the mall owner. Proponents say it will produce $84 million over 23 years that the mall owner, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, will use to make improvements designed to bring consumers back to the mall. Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield is a Paris-based company formed in 2018 after French commercial real estate firm Unibail Rodamco bought Westfield Malls, one of the largest U.S. shopping mall operators.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield announced plans to close several regional malls in the U.S.,  largely because of the sharp reduction in sales due to the pandemic. Online shopping already was cutting into mall sales, and COVID-19 surely didn’t help. Mall pedestrian traffic declined 91% in the first year of COVID before starting to rebound in 2021, according to INRIX, which monitors vehicular and human traffic. And retail advisory firm Coresight Research projected in 2020 that 25% of U.S. shopping malls would close in three to five years.

But is raising prices the way to make malls more attractive? Surely not, but what is? That’s the question.

Comparing online to in-store sales tax

A consultant’s report provided to the Skokie Village Board of Trustees argued that Old Orchard’s best customers are not that price sensitive.

“Affluent households and higher-skilled workers, the primary source of sales at Old Orchard, place a relatively high value on their time,” the report argued.

They clearly haven’t met my wife, who has shopped at Old Orchard for decades. She immediately got strategic. She observed that the only store she really likes at Old Orchard is L.L. Bean, and that she can order online from the apparel retailer and, if necessary, return items to the store at the mall.

“That way I won’t have to pay the sales tax at Old Orchard,” she concluded, triumphantly.

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That approach would save her a fair bit of change. Orders from LLBean.com for delivery to our home in Chicago carry a sales tax of 6.25%. That’s the rate the State of Illinois dictates for online or phone orders from out-of-state retailers like L.L. Bean, No. 62 in the 2021 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000, that have a physical presence in the state.

That’s a difference of 5% from the 11.25% now charged at Old Orchard. That is more than enough to change the behavior of a price-conscious shopper like my significant other.

The extra 1% Old Orchard is adding comes on top of an already combined local and state rate of 10.25% at the suburban mall. Across the U.S., the average state and local tax is 7.24%, according to a Digital Commerce 360 analysis of data from the Tax Foundation. (The average state sales tax alone is 5.66% for the 45 states and the District of Columbia that have sales taxes.)

Department stores leave shopping malls

But not all shoppers are solely motivated by price. An example is my colleague Lauren Freedman, who ran her own ecommerce consulting firm, The E-tailing Group, for decades before joining Digital Commerce 360 as senior consumer insights analyst.

Lauren is a world-class shopper. And shoppers like her want shopping malls to shop at, so she’s willing to pay a little more to help a retail hub like Old Orchard survive.

“I want Old Orchard to survive,” she says. “As neighbors and city dwellers, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Do I care if this store or mall exists?’ If you want this to be part of your world, you’ve got to support it, or it won’t exist.”

Fair enough. And it’s true enough that Old Orchard is facing some of the same problems as other malls. While it still features well-known department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s, it lost Lord & Taylor in 2018 and Barnes & Noble more recently. Part of the money raised with the additional tax is earmarked to improve the former Lord & Taylor space to make it attractive to a new tenant.

Attracting appealing new retail tenants is a tall order, given that the bankruptcies of department stores like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores have left gaping holes in many malls. In fact, Green Street Advisors has predicted that half of mall-based department stores would close, leaving lots of anchor spaces empty.

Retail store survival strategies

The decline of department stores and the many bankruptcies of specialty retailers during the coronavirus pandemic have left lots of retail space empty at shopping malls. Malls have responded by reducing the square footage allotted to retail stores from 73.6% in 2014 to 65.0% by late 2021, according to Innovating Commerce Serving Communities (ICSC), the trade association formerly known as International Council of Shopping Centers that took a new name last year.

Instead of stores, malls increasingly feature restaurants, movie theaters, professional offices, gyms and nail salons.

ICSC’s decision to take “shopping centers” out of its well-known name is itself a sign of consumer shopping shifting away from malls. Where are they shopping instead? Online, obviously, is a big part of the answer, as ecommerce accounted for 19.1% of retail sales in 2021, up from 8.0% in 2012, according to a Digital Commerce 360 analysis that excludes products like gasoline and restaurant meals rarely purchased online.

But is there still a place for brick-and-mortar retail? I know shoppers like Lauren Freedman and my wife like to go to stores. Even I do when I’m shopping for something I’m excited about buying. But the loss of nearly 20% of sales to websites, combined with the ease of comparing prices online that’s squeezing profit margins for all retailers, puts store-based retailers in a bind.

Still, some are finding a way to prosper. One of the best examples is Best Buy Co. Inc., No. 5 in the Top 1000. A decade ago, many thought the consumer electronics retailer would fall victim to “showrooming” — consumers checking out products in a store, then, often using their mobile phones, comparing the price on Amazon and other retail websites. Many thought consumers would ultimately buy on the web to get lower prices.

To its credit, Best Buy’s executives took the problem on directly. They decided to match online prices, including Amazon’s. Then they put a bigger focus on selling higher-margin secondary items, like cables and headphones, along with providing in-home services to help shoppers set up the flat-screen TVs and surround-sound music systems they bought at the store.

Target, too, has more than held its own by freshening up stores, adding private-label products that generally carry higher profit margins and investing in omnichannel services. That makes it convenient to shop at Target, no matter whether you start your quest online or in the store.

Brick-and-mortar retail has to innovate to survive, and I suppose you could argue that’s what Old Orchard is doing by raising prices 1% to fund mall improvements. It will be interesting to see if it works. I suppose it depends on whether there are more price-first shoppers like my wife or consumers like Lauren who just want to be able to keep going to the mall.

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Boohoo said Monday it’s buying the Debenhams brand for 55 million pounds ($75 million). Separately, Asos Plc said it’s in exclusive talks with administrators of Philip Green’s Arcadia Group Ltd. over the U.K. retailer’s Topshop and other labels.

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Although the online retailers are seeking to revive stalwarts of the country’s shopping centers, their interest centers on ecommerce and brands like 240-year-old Debenhams may survive only on the web. That threatens the positions of thousands of employees after the U.K. retail industry shed more than 100,000 jobs last year.

Boohoo rose as much as 5.7% in London, while Asos gained as much as 3.5%.

Boohoo said Monday it will acquire the Debenhams label and fashion sub-brands including Manta Ray and Principles. The modest purchase price reflects the fact that Boohoo is not buying any of the retailer’s inventory or keeping its 124 stores. When the current U.K. lockdown ends, they’ll only reopen long enough to sell remaining merchandise before closing again.

Last-minute deal

Boohoo’s last-minute swoop reflects the fast-growing retailer’s desire to expand its offerings online beyond its main customer base of young women. It also wants to use the Debenhams website as an Amazon-style marketplace vehicle to sell third-party brands and expand into sports and homewares. Debenhams, which employs 12,000 people, mainly in the stores, is one of Britain’s best-known retailers.

The department-store chain has struggled recently, weighed down by hefty rents and property taxes. Fierce competition from e-commerce in the U.K. has led consumers to visit stores less frequently, and the pandemic accelerated the trend. Debenhams entered administration, a U.K. form of insolvency, in December and is currently being liquidated.

Boohoo bought the Karen Millen and Oasis brands out of insolvency in 2019.

While the Debenhams star has been waning for years, the business still commands a large share of the beauty market and its website attracts more than 300 million visits each year, making it a top-10 online retail destination in the U.K.

“This looks a sensible bolt-on acquisition,” said Greg Lawless, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, in a note. “It enables Boohoo to enter adjacent markets—beauty, sports and homewares—nd bolsters their share in clothing across ladies and menswear.”

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group Plc, which had been in talks to rescue part of the Debenhams’ business, could now try to strike deals with landlords to take control of some of Debenhams’ stores for its own brands.

Frasers drives a hard bargain on rents, however, and said Monday that it’s closing its House of Fraser store in Edinburgh for good after failing to reach an agreement with the building owner, Anders Povlsen of Bestseller AS. About 200 jobs will be lost.

Topshop talks

Asos confirmed the talks for Topshop and some other Arcadia brands after Sky News reported that it’s the frontrunner to buy such assets from the insolvent company. A price of more than 250 million pounds ($343 million) is being discussed, according to the report.

The talks also include the Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands, according to a statement, which didn’t specify if a transaction would include any stores.

Asos wants to expand its customer base and has a strong businesses in the U.S. and Europe, where Topshop brand-recognition is high. The fashionable label has struggled in recent years since Green’s retail empire faltered after the sale of his BHS department store in 2015 and as lockdowns worsened already falling sales.

Fashion retailer Next Plc and a range of other potential acquirers were previously reported to be interested in Topshop.

Any deal would be funded in cash, Asos said. There’s no certainty of a transaction, it added.

Analysts at Berenberg said Asos’s move to buy the Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands makes “good strategic sense” as they are well known among the retailer’s target customers and a “natural fit” with the rest of the business.

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Soltau departed Dec. 31. Stanley Shashoua, the chief investment officer of Simon Property Group Inc., took over as interim CEO while a search for a new CEO is conducted, according to a statement from the company.

Mall owners Simon and Brookfield Asset Management acquired J.C. Penney Co’s retail operations to help keep one of their biggest tenants in business.

The departure is another burden for the struggling department store chain, which made rapid-fire leadership changes over the past decade as a series of turnaround plans fell short. While it wouldn’t be unusual for new owners to bring in a new leader, restarting the process could hurt J.C. Penney as it tries to right the company, said David Swartz, equity analyst at Morningstar Inc. “It’s not great news,” Swartz said.

Soltau, hired in October 2018, was in the middle of overseeing her own turnaround plan and putting a new team in place when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe this year and temporarily shuttered many retail stores. By May, J.C. Penney was bankrupt. She remained in the top job throughout the bankruptcy process, and the new owners highlighted her comments as CEO in the Dec. 7 announcement of the relaunch under the JCPenney name. JCPenney is No. 31 in the 2020 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000.

Simon and Brookfield plan to establish a temporary office of the CEO that will include members of JCPenney’s current management team, according to the statement. J.C. Penney Co. was split up during the bankruptcy into the operating company, which is owned by the mall operators, while lenders get the property company. The latter remains in the Chapter 11 process and is expected to emerge in the first half of 2021.

Soltau came over from craft retail chain Joann.com (No. 339), and before that was an executive at now-defunct Midwestern department store chain Shopko Stores Inc. Soltau worked to improve inventory management and lure more shoppers by revamping merchandise.

Now, as an intensifying pandemic threatens more disruption and store closings, “it would be much smoother” if Soltau could continue steering the turnaround, or if the company had a plan in place, Swartz said.

Macy’s finds a new chief merchandising officer

Macy’s Inc. (No. 14) named  Nata Dvir as the new chief merchandising officer of the Macy’s brand. Dvir is senior vice president and general business manager for beauty and center core merchandise, and effective Feb. 1. will be chief merchandising officer.

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Dvir will be responsible for leading Macy’s merchandising, with oversight of all merchandising categories and private brands, according to a press release announcing the news. She will replace Patti Ongman, who was promoted to the post about two years ago and has been at Macy’s for 35 years. Ongman plans to retire when she leaves her post.

“Nata is a strong merchant with deep connections to our partners, first-rate instincts and an eye for newness,” said Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette. “I’m confident that she will continue our merchandising transformation, influencing our customers’ personal style through accessible fashion, clear value and an enhanced digital and store experience.”

Dvir has been with Macy’s for more than 15 years. She has held various leadership positions and was given a newly created role of general business manager for beauty in 2017.

Wolverine Worldwide names a new president of global ecommerce

Wolverine Worldwide Inc. (No. 241), which owns footwear and lifestyle brands such as Harley-Davidson, Hush Puppies and Keds, appointed Matt Blonder as its new president of global ecommerce.

Blonder comes from shoe brand Reebok, where he served as the global head of marketing for more than three years. At Reebok, he “transformed the brand’s digital strategy, led a complete refresh of Reebok.com, revamped the digital consumer experience, and introduced a new global loyalty program,” according to the press release. And before that, he held leadership positions at Barnes & Noble Booksellers Inc. (No. 76) and Toys R Us Inc.

“Wolverine Worldwide witnessed a dramatic change in consumer behavior last year, highlighted by a significant shift to ecommerce and heightened digital engagement,” said president Brendan Hoffman. “We capitalized on this by accelerating our pivot to a digital-first strategy and expanding our digital investments and capabilities, all aimed at engaging consumers online with pinnacle brand experiences, fresh and innovative product, and compelling storytelling.”

Wolverine Worldwide has a goal to achieve $500 million in global ecommerce revenue for 2021, Hoffman said.

“Matt’s proven track record makes him the ideal person to lead this ongoing digital transformation,” he said.

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